BY CLIFF SMELLEY
Telegraph Staff Writer
Katie Kruzan’s love of math put her onto a career path she never would’ve envisioned as a student at Hope Christian Academy and has ultimately led to her having her own data-science consulting business.
Kruzan, Hope Christian’s 2013-14 valedictorian, lives in Chicago, helping small businesses figure out data science and how it can be utilized to hopefully bring them success.
“They don’t necessarily have to be the next Facebook, don’t necessarily have to be the next Google,” Kruzan said, “but they can still get a lot of value out of data.”
It’s not close to what the daughter of Dawn Kruzan thought she’d be doing when she was in high school.
“I loved math. Math and I were besties growing up,” Kruzan said. “I wanted to be an engineer because that’s what I thought that people good at math would do, but the college I ended up going to, which was Belmont University in Nashville, didn’t have an engineering program. They were like, ‘If you want to, you can just do math.’ I was like, ‘Wait, you can just major in math and not teach? Sounds great.’
“I ended up majoring in math.”
Data science allows businesses to gain insights through the collection and study of data. As Kruzan sates on her website (katiekruzan.com), data science can help increase revenue, drive competitive advantage and mitigate risk with applied mathematics.
Her website also states: “In spite of misconceptions about data science being an aspirational, extremely expensive business capability, I strive to help people build their own data-science functions without needing to hire an entire team.
“With the power of AI cloud services that can support data-science functions much more affordably, one consultant really can make the world of a difference in terms of how a company leverages data.”
Kruzan works with people who don’t fully understand data science and don’t realize that it’s something they can use.
“They feel like it’s this big, nebulous thing that they can never do,” Kruzan said.
What those people come to realize, Kruzan said, is that the tools of data science are financially obtainable and profitable.
“Seeing them have that realization is nice because sometimes there are people who try to over-engineer for a small business,” Kruzan said. “They try to make this beautiful, super-crisp model that ends up costing tens of thousands of dollars. Some people have been burned by that and are like, ‘That’s not for me.’
“I can work with those businesses and be like, ‘No. This can be very successful for you.’”
Kruzan also comes across people who believe data science and artificial intelligence “can solve everything.” She has to remind them, “We’re still useful (as humans).”
School in Music City
Math may be something Kruzan loves, but it was her love of music that played a factor in where she went to college. She took a trip to Nashville because of her love of music and fell in love with the area.
“It’s a beautiful city,” Kruzan said. “It has a lot of culture going on.”
With a laugh, she added, “It’s got mountains, which we don’t have very much of in Florida.”
When it came time to apply to colleges, Kruzan said she had made up her mind she wanted to go to school in Nashville. She convinced her mother to take her on a college visit to Nashville. Her mother agreed to do so if Kruzan would visit more than just Vanderbilt University. That led to a trip to Belmont.
Kruzan said she liked the fact that Christianity in a broad sense was a part of the Belmont culture.
She also found the Belmont campus to be full of friendly people.
“Long story short, I ended up loving Belmont. Didn’t really care for Vanderbilt,” Kruzan said, adding, “People were really, really nice at Belmont. Everybody was friendly. In my four years there, I maybe met two people who I didn’t like.”
Though she admitted it’s stressful, Kruzan said she does enjoy change, such as moving to Nashville and now living in Chicago.
“I said that Nashville was not big enough of a city, apparently,” she cracked.
In all seriousness, she’s enjoying her new experiences, which include enjoying non-Florida weather.
“We have all four seasons up here, which is delightful,” Kruzan said. “I think living in a city is very interesting in like you’re kind of part of this massive, massive place, but at the same time, the neighborhoods almost feel like their own small, little towns. You kind of get a different flavor with each neighborhood.
“Also, it’s nice to not have to drive everywhere. Using a bus is great.”
Entrepreneur, student and teacher
Kruzan said Belmont University is “pretty plugged into the tech sector in Nashville.” That led to an internship with a healthcare start-up, which eventually led to a full-time job.
“Basically, that start-up took in a bunch of healthcare claims and just ran a bunch of data on them,” Kruzan said. “Their main business was showing hospitals how they could get referrals from like primary care and all this other stuff. What I did was I helped them build a product that took patients’ previous claim histories and would predict how likely they were to get a particular disease like lung cancer.”
The desire to branch out on her own came from wanting the flexibility to choose her own projects.
“I also kind of wanted to niche down, specifically to small businesses,” Kruzan said.
That began in January 2021. Kruzan described taking the plunge into going into business for herself “genuinely terrifying,” adding, “I just believed in myself and hoped for the best.”
Kruzan benefited some from having friends who are entrepreneurs, saying she was able to avoid learning some of the “hard lessons” on her own.
Wearing many hats has also benefited her as well.
“At the end of the day, you’re not just doing the work of data science,” Kruzan said. “You’re also doing all of the marketing, you’re doing the selling, you’re doing all the back-end business stuff. Obviously, you can hire this stuff out, but early on, you have no clue what to do.
“That side of it also helped me to get more business savvy and be able to talk to small businessowners.”
So, what advice would Kruzan give to someone who wants to start a business? For one, she said accept the fact that mistakes are OK.
“It’s OK to try something out. If it doesn’t work, it’s OK to leave it. It’s OK to try things out and fail,” Kruzan said, adding, “As long as you’re learning things along the way, that’s the key.”
Kruzan said to also not adhere to a one-business-model-fits-all approach. Just because something’s always been done one way doesn’t mean that’s the way you have to do it. With regard to her own experience, she said, “It was kind of fun to kind of experiment. Try this thing for a little bit, try this thing for a little bit and end up finding something that works out.”
The future
Kruzan is currently working toward her Ph.D. at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She’s also a teaching assistant, which has provided her with an experience she’d like to continue.
“I didn’t want to be a teacher as an undergrad, but now, as it turns out, I’m wanting to be a professor,” Kruzan said.
That’s what Kurzan finds so interesting about her life’s journey. She wanted a career in math, but didn’t know that specific career would be. All she could do was follow her passion, which is what she encourages young people to do.
“Listen to yourself,” Kruzan said. “Trust whatever you feel called to do and what you feel like you enjoy doing. Trust that will get you to where you want to go, and you will be happy.”
